Matthew Ford’s Infernal Blog

I have a confession. I started recording and watching Star Trek The Next Generation – The Complete Seasons 1-7. And I love it. Now you know.

I used to listen to all the music I own in random rotation as I worked. But after a few months I realized I was burning out on songs that I liked, and I was getting kind of insular. So I started listening to Internet radio through live365.com. And I like it a lot! I can change it based on my mood. I vary among 80s, punk, lo-fi, and alternative. I’m getting exposed to a lot of new music, and there are some 80s nostalgia songs I like but I don’t like enough to buy the album they are on.

Some observations on Katrina sparked by Kanye West’s outraged speech at a fundraiser and the media coverage of “finding” versus “looting” food.  Interesting stuff, though it’s ill advised to make sweeping claims based on two cherry-picked photos out of thousands. Snopes did an admirable job of showing all sides of this.

I believe that overheated claims of racial bias ultimately help propagate true racial bias. I’d like to see people restrain themselves and stick to facts. There are plenty of indisputable facts which show racial bias in America; to fling around accusations without very good backup just makes the substantiated claims suspect. As promised, I’m all too willing to call out the foolishness of the Left as well.

A related, interesting, and more substantial discussion is about the media’s use of the term “refugee” to describe the victims of the hurricane. (continued »)

We’ve done it– moved into the new house in Kenmore. I’m more in love with the house than ever. Kira loves it too, she is looking out at the trees and birds, sniffing, stimulated.

It was a great feeling to wake up in the house, hear the birds, and watch the trees wave from bed. It was lovely to live in our new home. We had neighbors stop by and they were very nice.

Our friend Romi decided to accept our offer to stay with us for a while, using the guest room. She’s looking for fulltime work so in the meantime she’ll be a huge help, staying there to meet tradesmen, teaching Dylan how to get home from school via the bus, helping unpack and get things in order, and such. She’s also a very sweet and energizing person to have around and Kat and I are very pleased to have her along on the adventure.

Here are some notes on my trip to Uluru with Dylan, Kat, and her mom Josie. Photos are still in the camera with Kat. They are still vacationing and I am playing the bachelor at home, then I’ll catch up to them again Saturday. (continued »)

One of the things I love about Australians is that they (can I say “we” yet?) are so much less uptight than the USA about sex. And using sex not in the (IMO) creepy Asian way or the blasé Euro way; it’s fun and lusty and mischievous. Here are a few examples:

• On the most popular nationwide breakfast news-lite show, they broadcast from a museum that had a whale penis on display. The onsite host and museum staffer played around with it and the studio hosts, both male and female, made a number of naughty jokes about it.
• The same show frequently has a “joke of the day” which is almost always some kind of dirty joke, read and submitted by both men and women.
• A big billboard on the way out of the Brisbane airport touting a time-saving parking pass or the like has the tagline, “Slip in and out faster”.
• A TV commercial for “Titan” brand garage doors: A young man is talking with his dad in the yard standing in front of his garage. He says, “Hey da, you know how I was complaining that my last girlfriend didn’t have a Titan?” Dad nods. “Well, this time I’m going to do interviews.” The young guy talks with a number of sexy girls who are sitting up on his workbench right in front of him while his dad chats up the ones in line. The naughty part is that in the Australian accent, “Titan” sounds the same as “tight one”. So the guy sounded like he was saying to his dad, “You know how I was complaining that my last girlfriend didn’t have a tight one?”

Would any of this happen in on USA broadcast TV? I think not.

The building inspections and financing went through so it’s a lock… the house will be all ours on July 18. It was great to be back in the house again as we met the inspectors. I just love it more and more. I’ll put up pictures before long.

The termite inspector was a great Aussie bloke. He probably enjoyed horrifying us with tales of termite persistence. But he basically said “That’s Queensland, you got termites. It’s not our land, it’s theirs. We’re just building houses on it. If it weren’t for termites this place would be 100 foot deep in dead wood and we’d have no place to stand.” He’s been bitten by redbacks 42 times and “I’m still here” so I think he has a pretty relaxed attitude about annoying insects.

The offer on the third house was accepted! We’re very pleased and will have money left over for “reno”. We move in 60 days, assuming the building inspections and financing does not fall through.

We’ve now made a third offer on a third house. The market is very favorable to buyers here. We went in with low bids on two houses and did not raise them much so the offer was not taken. Now this third house is the one I like the most but also the cheapest! It backs onto a nature preserve which is awesome.

But the exchange rate is now dropping just after we transferred a lot of money here. Grrr.

We’re getting to the final stages of looking at houses now. There are a few we like, all of them in Dylan’s school’s neighborhood.

Happy Thanksgiving! There is nothing like it here in Oz and people regard it as a bit bizarre. Typical conversation: “So, what do you do for Thanksgiving?” “Well, eat. And talk.” “Are there presents?” “Nope… just food…” “Are there songs or a ceremony or something?” “Um, well I guess you can say grace or something before you eat…” I know that the best part of Thanksgiving is getting family and friends together, and that it is in that way a great holiday, one of my favorites. But I also realize that here it seems that friends and families already often get together for dinner and families live close enough to often do that, so a special occasion to get together is not so important here. Also, it’s really hot baking that turkey in the Aussie summer.

Of course I’m playing WoW! I love Blizzard games and I love the ideal behind MMORPGs, so it’s a natural choice. Let’s hope this is an MMORPG done right for once. Kat and Dylan and I are all starting to play and I’m very excited. We’re having lots of fun. Still seeing where all friends are playing and which characters I like the most but in case you are wondering it’s best to try to find me at: Silver Hand: Orogg (Human Warrior) (+ mystery RP character) Frostwolf: Waterhouse (Dwarf Priest)

Now I’m writing a Visual Basic app that rolls up random rooms for the mod. This is good because I was getting bored of doing all the dice work. Programming is fun in its own right and now I can start to use it to replace the boring bit, leaving all fun. I may try to sell or give away the whole mod set, with the program, when I’m done and have playtested it a lot more. Dylan is writing some of the code. In Notepad he does the tables for the monsters, which is basically a lot of data entry with code trimmings, but he is excited to be helping and proud to see his code at work.

Dylan got back from his school’s camp out at the reservoir and was delightfully telling us about it last night. He loved it and did lots of fun outdoorsy things. He got a lot of living in the wild advice from an Aboriginal man who showed them plants to chew and ways to learn about animals, and Dylan even broke open a termite nest and ate some live termites! He said they tasted like peanuts. It was wonderful to hear and it’s so good to have him back.

Dylan and I have been playing a lot of Classic Rogue (which you can find and download pretty easily). There is something so entertaining about that old, old game. We compete for the high score. With that as inspiration we spent a lot of the weekend with me DMing a “Rogue style” D&D session where I used the random dungeon generation rules on the fly and he took a party of level 5 adventurers into the depths. It was simple, kick-in-the-door playing with gold as the final score, restarting if any of the party died. I used a modification of the rules I’ve been using lately where you’re encouraged and expected to fully rest between fights, right there in the dungeon, using a little altar gizmo that you have to feed gold. The more HP or hunger you have to recover the more gold you have to feed it. It encourages smart play while avoiding tromps back and forth to town to recharge. Dylan is an enthusiastic and creative player, and we got into all kinds of fun situations just with the simple elements of random dungeons plus a bit of creative interpretation on my part. The d20 rule system really shone.

Went to Greg’s to watch the AFL Grand Final (Australian rules football league– a very entertaining game played on a huge circular field). What a close game! Shockingly the Brisbane Lions lost and thereby failed to tie the record for most grand final wins in a row (4).

I’m just recovering from a really bad flu. Very high fever. I had not been that sick for many years. I’m still not all well.

I was getting too uptight about work. I had to remind myself recently that I came to Oz not in pursuit of superachievement, to work in the most perfect environment, or to fit into a perfect team. If I’d wanted to pursue those things I’d have stayed in the states. I came here to: learn about how to lead a game development team; make my mark on a company; and most importantly, to learn to mellow out a bit. All those things are still right here for me. I took this opportunity to move to Oz because the time was right for me and my family to go on this adventure. I came here to enjoy life the way Aussies do. I came here to internalize the attitude I saw when I worked in Sydney and which exists here in Brisbane too: that though work is important and we all want to do a good job, work is not everything. It’s not cool to get too uptight here. You aren’t measured entirely by the height of your achievement or profit. You don’t get anywhere by stressing out, by being bullish, by fighting the dominance game which is endemic to the US cities where I’ve worked. If there’s one thing I really want to learn by living and working here, it is to learn how to say: She’ll be right. Wish me luck.

It was a holiday on Wednesday. After a bit of indecision and regrets about having to leave the dog behind we accepted Robin and Paul’s invitation to go out to Bribie Island. I’m glad we did. We caravanned to a 4×4 lot and took Robin’s 4-wheeler up the beach, with me, Kat, Dylan, Robin, Penny, and their son Toby. It was exciting and bouncy, and a bit scary to be plunging up and down the sand rises next to the crashing waves. (continued »)

Good god, another blog entry on this movie, who needs it? But at least I have the somewhat unique experience of being a Yank seeing it in Oz. Went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 today with Kat. I think was quite good and also depressing, it exposes so much misery and wrongness. I can’t believe that Bush is not already ridden out on a rail; the fact that this election is looking like it will be close is horrifying. Even if Kerry wins, it will not be by much it appears, and what does that say about the American people, that they have not turned against Bush and his cronies?

Here is Oz there is a great deal of concern about the direction the USA is going, (continued »)